The Sky Has Claws
by CLA1R3
Summary: How come the Alphas never once seemed to fear or lose their minds in the Umbrella estate? What if they did? Would they be talking to items? Would they create imaginary friends? Would they try to kill each other?
1. Enter the Survival Horror

**_Love Lies in a Puddle of Blood_**

**Author:** Panika feat. Pyres

**Music:** Third Realm - Light a Candle

**Notes:** Hello, everyone. This is my first Resident Evil fic based on the RE for Gamecube. I got inspired from NYPD Blue, but this isn't a crossover. It's just my version of what happens after Chris and Jill get into the mansion. And one final thing, I don't hate Wesker. It's just Jill. I'll tell you later why. -winks-

If you liked this, check out Dark Moon Crystales's stories as well.

Enjoy!

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"Jill! Into my office, now." The leader of the S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team, Wesker, commanded and she lifted her gaze from her papers, raising her eyebrows. When Wesker used a tone of voice like that it meant serious business, nothing like her recent work; bending paperclips and filing reports. She put her papers down and sighed, following him to the office and closing the door behind her.

"What's going on, Boss?" She asked, leaning against the door. "Finally got something to kick me out?" She continued, jeering. Jill didn't like Wesker, he had threatened to fire her if she wouldn't stop being so irresponsible and thoughtless, rushing to danger to save an officer who would've died anyway.

"You know I don't want to kick you out of the force, Jill. I have my superiors as well." Wesker answered calmly.

"Yeah, right." She rolled her eyes, Wesker could be as nice as he wanted to but she didn't like him and why would she pretend otherwise? Ass-kissing wasn't for her. She wanted to earn her promotion, not kiss for it. She had the skills; she didn't need to kiss anyone's ass to get promoted.

"Jill, strange murders have been committed recently here in Raccoon City. There are unsolved cases of families being attacked by some… grotesque… things." Wesker said the last words slowly and with a hint of disgust in his voice as he looked out through the Venetian blinded window at the sunny day outside.

"What things?" She asked sceptically, giving a laugh. He was reminding her of those horror movies she had liked to watch when she had been younger, there was a man who had black eyes and pale skin and he killed people just for the fun of it and then there had been another where a man in a yellow raincoat and a hook in his other hand and he would go around killing people mindlessly. Back then they had been scary but nowadays she thought they were laughable.

"All of the victims were apparently eaten. We were able to find bite marks on the victims' bodies."

"And? Rabid badgers? Bears? Bigfoot himself?" Jill continued to jeer.

"Human." Wesker turned to look at her, his expression sad, yet confused.

Jill wasn't able of saying anything yet. She wasn't sure had she heard right. If there were families out there, in danger to be killed by some sick human, _a cannibal_, why hadn't the news told any of it? And how could someone _eat _another human without a sensible reason?

"That's not true. It would've been on the news." Jill said, shaking her head.

"It hasn't been on the news because we don't want anyone to panic. There are already rumours, bad rumours and I don't want to feed them."

"But they should be warned that a cannibal, _a murderer_ is on the loose." She took a step towards him, glaring at him. People had the right to know if a slaughterous madman was out there, walking on the streets of Raccoon City freely, looking for his next victim.

"We don't know how many are there. The reports say that the attacks were committed by a group of maybe ten people." Wesker sighed, walking to his desk and looking for some files on it.

"So are you saying this is a cult of some kind?" Jill asked, she wanted to know more.

"I don't know. We sent the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team to the hideout of the group, and lost contact." He said sadly, finding the files and taking them in his hands, checking were they really the right reports. "Here, these are copies so you can keep them. I want you to read these reports and get ready with the rest of the Alpha team, you are going there to find out what happened to them."

Jill took the reports and opened the first one, seeing a picture of a dead young girl, her left cheek eaten and her eyes staring emptily in front of her, blood coloured her dress. "Oh." She said. "I'll tell the rest of the team."

"I've told everyone separately and given everyone copies of the reports. That way you know what you're dealing with. Good luck."

"Thanks." She said and left the office, wondering what kind of a cult would go around murdering and eating people like this. She wanted to find out had they found anything indicating to satanic cults at the crime scenes; it would explain the nature of the murders, but not completely. This really was bizarre.

She spent the rest of her day at work wondering who, or with growing horror _what_, could've done those murders. Her thoughts raced from

_Hannibal "the cannibal" Lecter_

old B-class zombie movies to satanic cults and from madmen to the possibility that there was, in those forests, living an untamed denomination of some primitive man, living by the laws of the Aztecs or Mayas. Ridiculous, of course, but she didn't want to rule anything out before she was absolutely sure.

She got home and checked was there anything in her fridge, finding a can of orange juice and a half-eaten sandwich, wrapped in thin plastic. They were better than nothing and her today's meal. She was too excited to read the reports to order food, she wouldn't eat it anyway.

Jill looked at the images of the eaten people, realizing from the victims' facial expressions, their eyes wide open in horror, their mouths curved to a grimace of pain and fear, that they had been alive when someone had taken a bite of them. What kind of a monster could eat a child alive like the girl whose picture she had seen?

She woke up around three in the morning, noticing that she had fallen asleep on her desk, holding a cup of cold coffee in her other hand. Although the reports fascinated her, she needed sleep to be sharp tomorrow when they would go look for the Bravo team.

The morning came and she arrived to their headquarters, she saw Chris. For a while already she had had a crush on him, but she had always thought that it would pass like al of her other crushes when she had them. Se was Chris's friend; she wasn't in love with him. Besides, it wasn't appropriate to date someone from work.

_Are you giving reasons for not accepting your love towards him? _Her subconscious asked maliciously. She shook her head slightly, of course she wasn't. And this wasn't the time to be thinking about him now when murderers were walking freely on the streets of Raccoon City.

_But he sure is handsome, isn't he? _Her subconscious continued.

"Okay, everyone. Into the helicopter." Wesker said after a brief introduction. They would go to the forests and locate the Bravo team's helicopter. After that they would take a closer look at

_Chris_

the helicopter and see what had happened. They were all a little scared about what they would find in the forest, but no one dared to show it, not even their chicken-hearted pilot. Everyone just looked at their feet, wondering and imagining, having mental images of mad humans eating flesh, all the remnants of humanity gone from their hearts.

The day was leaning towards night already and ominous clouds were starting to gather above them, t would rain heavily later on today.

"Look, Chris!" Jill shouted, pointing at smoke rising from the forest. It was the helicopter of the Bravo team, it had crashed on the ground, but they saw no fire.

The landed with their helicopter and everyone else except the pilot got out to see what had happened. Strangely, most of the equipment was still in the Bravo team's helicopter along with one of the members, he too… eaten. Jill and Chris were looking for the other members, walking deeper into the forest when one of the members called:

"Hey, come here!" He shouted over his shoulder. As Jill ran loser to him, she saw that he was looking at a body being eaten by dogs. But these weren't normal dogs, they were somehow… rotten. They smelled like rotting flesh and parts of their body had been eaten. Had they been attacked by those mad people as well? And how had they survived, how could they live with their bodies, some of them had just their spine where the chest was suppose to be. What was keeping them together?

_They're dead. Metabolism stops when you die, they're all just pieces of dead, motionless, lifeless meat. _

But they were still moving. They were still alive.

_They're dead. Nothing can live without ribs, all body liquids would flow out. _

"Joseph!" She saw these warped, perverted creatures ripping their team member's hands and legs and eating him. They were _eating _him. They were feasting with his body. She tried to go closer, but one of the dogs saw her and turned to them. It snarled, blood dripping from the corner of its mouth. Then it dashed towards them and they start to run towards their helicopter, firing at the dogs at times.

When they got closer to their helicopter, it began to take off and left right before they got to it.

"No, don't go!" Chris shouted after it. But their chicken-hearted pilot couldn't hear him. He was flying back to Raccoon City alone, leaving his team members to die into the forest.

They kept running away from the dogs, still occasionally turning around and firing them, hitting few that collapsed, but they knew they couldn't go on forever. Then they saw an ominous-looking mansion coming to view gradually from behind the trees.

"Jill! Run for that house!" Chris commanded her and she took his word, shooting one of the dogs again. They got in with Wesker and closed the door behind them, all secretly wondering why the door was open.

_There are only three STARS members left, Captain Wesker, Chris and myself. _

But what was most important was that Chris was safe. Jill walked closer to him and although exhausted from running away from the dogs, smiled at him.

"Are you okay?" He meant it for Chris, she didn't care was Wesker all right or not.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Are you?" Chris asked, looking directly into her eyes, smiling a little too. He didn't think about Wesker either. It was Jill he wanted to be safe.

"I'm _fine._" Wesker answered, knocking his sunglasses on his nose. "I'm really _fine._"

"Okay, stop rubbing it in." Jill answered, irritated. Chris could've said something romantic to her then, but no, Wesker had to tell them he had survived as well. Of course, they could've paid some attention to him too, but what for? She didn't like him and Chris... Well, she didn't know what he thought about Wesker.

"Barry?" Jill noticed that one of their team wasn't with them anymore. "Where's Barry!?"

Wesker and Chris were both quiet for a while, looking around until Wesker said: "I'm sorry, but he's probably--"

"No..." Jill said, looking at her love, waiting for him to tell her Barry was alive and that he knew where he was. There was a gunshot from the western side of the mansion, then everything became quiet again. "What was that?" She asked, every muscle in her body getting ready for combat.

"You go and check, I'll stay here and secure this room." He said and took his gun.

Jill and Chris walked into the dining hall, both wary, not knowing what to expect from this mansion. It sure seemed spooky and freaky, like it lived its own life somewhere in these walls, like it breathed and its breath was poisonous. Something made this mansion malevolent towards them and they had no idea what it was. Or where the feeling came from, it was just a house, nothing more, nothing less.

"There's nothing here." She pointed out the obvious. Chris mumbled something to himself and to hear him better, she trotted next to him. It wasn't the real reason why she got closer to him, but at least she could hear him if he had something to say. Or if he wanted to put an arm around her.

After checking the dining hall, they entered a small, narrow corridor. A strange sound of smacking and slurping and _devouring._ It wasn't any humanly sound, it was the sound of something much more primitive, something that lived only to eat, that had nothing in its mind but to eat and satisfy itself.

They walked to the end of the hall, seeing a member of the Bravo team being _eaten _by a human, dressed in rags and it made sounds like a primitive wolf, tearing his flesh with its blunt teeth, gnawing it like it had never eaten meat before. No, not meat. Flesh.

"What the hell is that?" Chris uttered, his voice quivering, staring at the man who had bent over Kenneth, devouring his body.

"I..." She didn't know what it was, she couldn't answer. Before she could even think about it, the warpage of a man stood up on its shaky legs, it wasn't even standing like a person, it seemed like all its flesh, or what was left of it, just hanging from its spine it didn't even bother to walk straight. It lifted its hands in front of it as if it wasn't able of seeing and needed its hands to know where he was, where was the wall and where was the next victim to be eaten.

It moved slowly, and right towards Chris, who had his knife ready. Jill took her gun and fired it in the head two times, but the bullets had no effect. It thrust itself forward and lunged at Chris, taking a hold of him with its rotten fingers and he could feel how its fingernails sank into his flesh. He tried to fight it, but it had amazingly strong hands and without hesitation tried to bite his neck.

Jill watched the horror show in front of her, trying to find a place where to shoot at the distortion of a man, but where ever she went, it always seemed like it was aware that she wanted to shoot it and used Chris as a shield against her.

"Shoot it!" Chris shouted, his powers draining fast.

"I can't! It's using you as a shield!"

"_Shoot it, Jill, goddamnit!_" He commanded, his voice both desperate and furious. She closed her eyes, knowing that her hands trembled, she was going to shoot first Chris and then that bastard and she would do it now. But she didn't want to shoot Chris, she wanted him to live, she wanted him to know about her feelings towards him.

_A member of the S.T.AR.S.__ team is supposed to do his or her work, commands are meant to be obeyed, feelings must not come in the way of a member, and order is an order, you shoot if you need to or are commanded to. _She remembered Wesker's words, cruel but those were the rules.

She didn't want to obey.

"_JILL!_" Chris shouted and without letting herself think any more, she pulled the trigger and heard the bang the gun made.

And she didn't want to open her eyes until she had fired all the shots.

_All the shots._

---

Okay, there it is, folks. I used the original intro from the Resident Evil for Gamecube in this, but the story will differ from the game in the next chapter.

Thanks for reading; I'd really love your reviews!


	2. Don't Spill Your Marbles Now, Girl

**_Love Lies in a Puddle of Blood_**

**Author:** Panika feat. Pyres

**Music:** Dire Straits – On Every Streets

**Notes:** Sorry for being a little slow... I'm doing my best updating as often as I can, but... Yeah, right, like you were interested. -laughs- Anyway, here's chapter 2, enjoy!

**Reviewers:** Thank you! When you were kind enough to take time to review, I take time to answer you!

_JoJo10:_ It's not easy trying to write a horror-story, but I'll do my best! Thanks for the praises, here's the update!

_Dark Moon Crystales:_ Well, with you it's a little different. I didn't know my writing-style can be both creepy and fluffy at the same time, but I guess it can! Reader is always right! Soon you'll see for yourself did she kill him or not.

_whoa__, what's this:_ Thanks for saying that, I'm trying very hard to make this good!

_TheDonutMistress_: You don't need to wait anymore, here it is!

_Spider-bear:_ They don't always die when you shoot them in the head… Or maybe I just wanted to be dramatic –laughs-

_DarthBond__:_ Thanks, I've written a lot to become what I am now and I look at my works and think; 'I have to keep practicing!' Aww, but now here's chapter two, freshly baked and ready to be read!

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She kept her eyes closed for a long time after she had fired all the shots, still pulling the trigger and the gun clicking in her trembling hands. Not only were her hands trembling, but her whole body seemed to be falling apart. None of her muscles wanted to work; she couldn't get her body under her control, some greater force, something primitive in her was making her shake and want to run.

_Run._

Run and run until she would be far away from this place and that…

_Keep running _

that warpage of a man, that thing.

Finally she opened her eyes, only a little, breathing unevenly. The room was gloomy and dark; the thunder raged outside, the rain whipped the window with its merciless raindrops. The monster lay on top of Chris, its bloody and bitten body was completely limp.

Jill held her tears back that almost forced their way out of her eyes, they wanted to flow down her cheeks and fall on the floor, deep down in her heart she wanted to be a normal girl who had just lost her love, not a tough S.T.A.R.S. member. She bent over the body of the warpage that had just attacked them and examined it, pinching the dead, loose kin of the creature and it ripped off as if the whole man could've crumbled away like a cookie right there in front of her eyes.

After a moment of disgust she pushed it off Chris and took his head in her arms, holding him close against her chest. She cleaned Chris's face from the blood from the attacker, finally letting one tear escape her eye. She sniffled quietly, whispering comforting words in a confused mass to the emptiness of the room. Then she sighed and got up, lifting Chris's limp body on one of the chairs in the corner. She knew that there would be more of those monsters and they would be hungry and they would eat him, but she couldn't carry him around forever.

She returned to the door and was about to go back to the main hall through the dining hall, but then returned.

"Chris… You were a great S.T.A.R.S. member. I really enjoyed working with you." She saluted him, holding her tears back and went to the door that leaded to the dining hall again. She had already opened it when she decided to return once more.

This time a little embarrassed, although she knew that he was dead and couldn't hear or see her or know in any way that she was there she felt embarrassed as she returned and sat next to her former friend and love. "Chris… As a friend… I really enjoyed your company." Then she got up, looking at him tenderly.

Jill took a deep breath and pressed her lips on his mouth gently as a farewell-kiss. Suddenly she opened her eyes and drew back, realizing she wasn't kissing Chris, she was kissing a corpse. It sure was Chris's corpse, but his breath wasn't in it anymore. It had disappeared, vanished, gone. And considering the place where they were in, she thought of him as lucky.

"You lucky bastard." She said out loud as she loaded her gun again. "Anyway, I'm going to report back to Wesker. Loons like that can be anywhere..." She continued, but stopped upon realizing that she was talking to a corpse. She was talking alone in this mansion like there was someone with her.

_Crazy.__ You're going crazy. Spilling your marbles. Becoming mentally disoriented._

Jill shook her head. She wasn't going crazy in any way. This was happening, she was just a little jumpy and speaking always helped being scared. But usually people had _someone to talk to _when they were scared.

She turned around as fast as she could and ran out of the room, out of the dining hall to the main hall, suddenly she didn't want to see Chris's dead face anymore or think about the rotting corpse of Kenneth on the floor, wonder what had happened to the warpage of a man to make him like that, she didn't want to think about going crazy.

When she got to the main hall, it was empty, booming with an eerie feeling that something malevolent could jump out of the shadows and eat her alive like it had eaten all of its victims back in Raccoon City. Something made the house feel like evil lived in its walls and it wasn't just that dead man in the hallway where Chris had died, it was something that went deeper, it had been there ever since the first brick had been put on its place to build the walls. And what made her even more scared was that Wesker was gone although he had promised to stay there and wait for them to get back.

"Wesker!?" She called. "Wesker, answer me!!"

Nothing.

Except the house breathing.

_No, the house isn't breathing. Houses can't breathe. They're brick on a brick, lifeless stone. Just like those dogs. And that man. They were dead too. _Her subconscious said maliciously, enjoying feeding her already panicking imagination.

"Get yourself together." She whispered to herself, her voice quivering badly. But she couldn't help it, the image of the man who had tried to eat Chris was freshly on her mind and her imagination was giving her bizarre explanations why he was like that.

Jill knew she wasn't in a condition to be thinking about anything right now; she had lost her love and seen something only a few would believe if she told about it. Now she would need to sit down and get herself together before doing anything. She sat down on the stairs and drew a deep breath.

_This isn't happening, this is happening, this isn't happening, _repeated in her head like a tape, again and again. But she had seen it; she had seen those dogs, that man… They were dead! For God's sake, _dead! _They were supposed to be buried underground and stay there like normal dead people do. But these were walking carcasses, they _moved _although they were dead.

It didn't make any sense! When someone died, their metabolism stopped and they began stiffen; _rigor mortis_. But it was true that the man who had attacked Chris had seemed overly clumsy, as if he… preferably _it_ was some kind of a large doll made of thick wood. But dead can't walk on the earth!

_What really happened here? What the hell happened here to that man, that warpage of a corpse!? _

She didn't know and although her curiosity wanted to know, she wasn't sure would her sanity be able to handle with the information of what had happened here. Maybe some tests had been done in this mansion… although there wasn't any evidence of a lab, no strange bottles or liquids, smells of strong acids, nothing. But it was huge, she had seen only a few rooms, she could find anything here.

And she was pretty sure that in _this mansion _anything wasn't a problem.

"What's happening here…?" She buried her face in her hands and took many deep breaths as she had been taught to take in an emergency situation like this. "What the hell is happening here!?" She shouted to the roof, her voice sounded defiant yet completely broken, mad that that thing had killed Chris and Kenneth and who knows how many people like him were here in this mansion, waiting for her to come close enough to eat her as well.

After a moment of uncontrollable emotions, erupting as tears from her eyes, she got up and sighed, completely in one piece again. Everything was fine and she would find out what had happened here, it was her job. She would be bad and not worth her badge if she wouldn't find out what had happened.

For Chris's sake she would find out what had happened.

But where would she go? The mansion was gigantic. She could easily get lost and wouldn't be able to get back in case of emergency. She decided to go back where Chris's body was and try all the doors in the hallway. Maybe from the rooms where they led she would find some answers and also, watch a little over Chris if more of those unholy creatures were coming after him… and his flesh.

She got back to the hallway and before she had even closed the door behind her she heard a moan, a soulless call for something… something it yearned. She turned to look at another dead man that had probably come for Chris's flesh. Its eyes were empty and light blue as if it was blind, but it sure seemed like it could see her, it headed straight towards her, lunging forward clumsily.

Or maybe it couldn't see after all.

Maybe it could smell her.

_Ridiculous._

She fired at it; hating it for what it's… it's…

_f__riend? _

What that another corpse had done to Chris. Had made her do to Chris. The corpse staggered as the bullet hit its head, but didn't fall over. She fired again, without any effect. Then she fired four times, directly into its head and it blew up, the blood sprayed on the walls of the hallway, it fell down and a puddle of blood ran from its body and surrounded it.

"That's where you belong." Jill said, spitting on the corpse. She crouched next to the body and tried its lifeless, rotting skin and pulse as well, finding none. Then the thought came to her. Was this a _zombie? _A living dead? Because it sure looked like one. Just like in those B-class movies she had watched.

But what had created it? Where had it come from? Questions ran in her head like scared bunnies, she was trying to search for answers from her memory, but found none. It was –or at least _had _been- impossible to bring the dead back to life. And there was no other explanation for this distortion of a man, because his body had been dead at least for a month, his skin and the rest of his body was decomposing already, his hair was thin and greasy, large pieces of dandruff were about to come off.

She got up, feeling the chills running down her spine. Also, it was so gross, the body, that she wanted to find the nearest bathroom and throw up, her breakfast and the little sandwich she had eaten in the helicopter wanted to come out.

Instead, Jill took a deep breath and inhaled. Then she lifted her boot and with a moment's blinded rage she stomped the creature's head, letting the sticky, almost coagulated blood stain her pants.

"Try walking around now." She said scornfully before starting towards Chris's and Kenneth's bodies.

When she got there, she gasped. Chris's body was gone. It had been sitting on one of the chairs, but now it was gone. There weren't even blood stains on the floor to show that he had been taken somewhere.

And that was even worse than seeing his eaten body on the chair because now she didn't know where he was and what kind of obscene things these warpages of a man were doing to his poor body, now defenceless without its spirit. Or what if…

What if he was still alive?

---

It's not supposed to be this gloomy, sorry for that, I'll cheer it up in the next chapter. Just bear with me, readers!

Thanks for reading, your reviews would be wonderful!


	3. Barry, a Lock Pick?

**Author:** Panika feat. Pyres

**Music:** Resident Evil Biohazard 2 – The Underground Laboratory

**Notes: **Sorry, I took my time again. I've just been busy with school and everything. It seems like I have less and less time to read and write fics… And I love this fic because it's my first horror fic and I'm really putting a lot of effort into it. If you like this one, read _The Swans Sing When They Die _as well. I've been into one-shots a lot lately, so I think there'll be more of them too…

**Reviewers:** Thank you so much for your comments!

_spider-bear:_ Well, he might be alive… Hmm… Wesker might've needed his dead body though, so you'll just have to wait until Jill uncovers the truth…

_JoJo10:_ Thank you so much for saying that! I'm really trying to make it sound real, like the game because the game is so awesome that it deserves all the skill I have to describe all the horrors and still I need practice!

_Selphiefan 89:_ Wow, thank you! I'm trying to make it even darker as it goes on.

_jano:_ Thank you so much! It would be horrible if he was a zombie, wouldn't it? Could Jill even kill him if he tried to bite her, or would she just let him?

_SpiritoftheDead:_ No more waiting, here's the third chapter!

_puc:_ Thank you! I'm doing my best to write a good story and it's great to hear that I'm succeeding!

**Barry, a Lock Pick?**

What if he had turned into one of those inhuman warpages, those zombies that walked in the corridors and rooms of the house freely, searching only for food, fresh, new food? She felt the tears wanting to roll down her cheeks, feeling guilty for leaving poor Chris alone against them. His end had been quick and merciful, he hadn't died as a dinner for a zombie, but from the bullet of a friend… a friend whose feelings went deeper than just friendship. She comforted herself by thinking that even if the body of Chris Redfield would walk towards her in one of these creepy rooms, she would know that his spirit was in a better place, ignorant of it's body living even after death as a zombie without a heart or a mind.

She loaded her gun, taking a defiant expression on her face. If no one else survived in this mansion, she would and she would tell the rest of the world what had happened and _who _was responsible for all of it. These people who had been turned into zombies hadn't done it by themselves, something had triggered their brain to reactivate after death to become one of them and she wanted to know what it was.

Jill walked slowly to the end of the corridor, down the stairs past an old elevator feeling very unwelcome as the corridor became narrower and the lighting that was already dim, became dimmer and red, the old walls of the stairs were so close to her shoulders that she could feel the wetness of them. There was something red on them, maybe it was rust from the rusty door ahead, or then… she didn't even want to think about it. She knew that if she wouldn't control her thoughts, she would go crazy, anyone would. She needed to be one hell of an iron lady now.

She tried the door to the kitchen, closing her eyes and hoping that it was locked, wanting to cry, wanting to roll up in a ball and hide in a dark corner and cry and wait for the zombies to come and shoot them until she would run out of bullets and they would eat her like they had eaten Chris. But her will to survive was stronger than those feeble feelings, she knew that without looking for an exit, she would never get out. She heard the door made a clicking sound, telling her that it was locked and she sighed relievedly.

Jill almost ran back to the dining room, thinking that it was safe. Although she knew that no place in this mansion was safe, she felt relieved to have a large room around her with space to move around. But before she had even tried to calm herself down, she heard a zombie moan somewhere above her and as she looked there, there was a room above the dining hall with a hole in the middle to make the dining hall feel bigger and wider. And over there, blocked with a balustrade, was a zombie trying to get to her, holding its arms in front of it, moaning, swaying on its feet with bad balance. Its white eyes were looking into the distance, it really seemed as if it couldn't see her, but I_ smell _her. She made a disgusted face, the chills running up her spine. There was a rotting corpse up there, wanting to come down and eat her.

Jill took her gun and aimed at its head and fired. The head blew up, spraying blood around and the zombie fell on the floor with a loud thud. Dust on the dining table flew on the air and floated back down gently in peace as if nothing had happened. She listened to the large pendulum clock tick slowly, somehow thinking that it was jeeringly ticking so loud to count the seconds she still had left in the house until a zombie would come and kill her.

She walked past it, glaring at it with hatred, wanting to spit on it.

"I'm not going to die in here… not going to die in here…" She chanted slowly, half to herself, half to the clock. Then she suddenly stopped, looking at its pointers on the dial like a round face covered with a mask. Without a thought she fired at the clock three times, almost growling: "You hear me!? I'm _not_ going to die_ here_! _Not here!_"

The gun fell from her hands to the floor with a sharp click, all the rounds emptying on the floor. She stared at the clock with growing horror; she knew she was going crazy. The clock couldn't have jeered her. It wasn't able to speak or talk, it could only tick mindlessly, following the flow of time with its pointers. She crouched to pick up her ammunition and loaded her gun again, realizing that she had only eleven shots left. If she couldn't find more bullets, she would be defenceless against those dead people walking around in the mansion.

Before she could think about the clock any longer, she ran to the main hall, closing the large doors behind her. It seemed that even if she tried to stay sane, she was losing her mind, slowly, but it was slipping away from her steadily, piece by piece disappearing into the deep darkness of madness. She felt the tears forcing their way out of her eyes, running down her cheeks uncontrollably, she was panicking and afraid, her sobs echoed in the vast main hall, but she tried to wipe the tears away to hold herself together. She leaned against the door, inhaling and exhaling slowly, tightening her grip on her gun, ready to shoot anything that moved.

But it seemed that the mansion was waiting for her to come deeper into its dark and gloomy corridors to see what had happened, how it had seen everything happen and done nothing to help it because it had enjoyed watching those people die or get killed and then rise from the dead to kill those who were still alive. It was breathing quietly with an ominous echo somewhere deep in its structures like a panther lying in ambush; waiting for its prey to come close enough to attack it.

Jill was able to calm down by thinking about surviving and Chris, if she would die here, he would've died in vain protecting her. This thought gave her courage to fight against the zombies and the house, and worst of all, her own sanity.

After gaining control of herself, she visited the upper dining hall and the statue room, finding a map of the first floor of the mansion. It was huge and it was only the first floor of the mansion! She marked the rooms where she had been with the pen she always had with her to know where she hadn't found an exit. She circled the main hall and the door where she had come in just in case the dogs would go away and she could escape through there.

Jill decided to go to back to the hallway once more to try the door in the room where she had left Chris. Maybe she would run to his walking corpse, but at least she was ready and waiting for it. But even if she was ready, she wasn't sure could she kill him even if he tried to bite her neck. As she passed Kenneth's already cold body, she got the tape he was holding and continued her way to the next room.

She ran through the room, finding some familiar herbs she had seen as a kid. She remembered how her father had told her to use these if she cut herself and they would heal her wounds. What a blessing it was to have those herbs in that horrible building! Without them she knew she would've died sooner or later, but now salvation was looking closer and easier all of a sudden. She sighed relievedly as she picked the herbs up and put them in her pocket, hiding them inside her handkerchief, running up the old creaky stairs to the second floor.

In front of the yellow-greenish door was something glittering in the light of the swinging lamp. Jill ran to it, hoping that it was ammunition, but instead it was a lock pick that was used to open to simplest of locks. Her eyes widened as she recognized whose it was, the initials carved on its side BB could only belong to Barry Burton.

"Barry!" She picked it up gently, hugging it like a baby in her arms with an encouraging smile on her lips. "Barry, you're still alive… and… we'll get out of here alive."

It comforted her to know that Barry had at least been here; he had seen the same things she had seen and probably understood the same feelings she had. Maybe he had even fought against insanity just like she had. It made her feel so good to have someone who understood.

Jill placed the lock pick carefully on her belt resting on her lips and patted it a few times with a smile:

"It will all turn out all right, Barry, because you know machinery and I'm fast. Together we can make it, can't we?"

She waited for an answer for a while, but then snapped out of it. The lock pi

ck wasn't Barry and it wasn't sure that he was alive at all. He could be dead like Chris, disappeared into this mansion's hundreds rooms without a trace. What scared her was that she had tried to get an answer from it; she had spoken to it like it would've been a person, Barry himself hanging on her waist.

"It's not Barry, it's a lock pick, you idiot." She told herself, looking at the red lock pick disbelievingly, the thought of it having Barry's spirit somewhere hidden between the layers of metal was tempting for her sanity, but she wouldn't let herself believe it. She wouldn't go crazy. She would never let herself go crazy.

In the corridor was a body lying on the floor as if it had been running and suddenly just suffered a heart attack and died there. Even the expression was filled with horror, the white eyes staring wide-eyedly to the distance, the mouth curved to a scream of horror. Everywhere on the man's body were bites; pieces of flesh had been torn off. When she examined it closer, she saw teeth marks on one of the bones in his feet. The teeth marks didn't belong to an animal; they were a human's teeth that had gnawed the bone of its flesh.

She got up and left, disgusted by the man's appearance. As she walked through the corridor, she thought about the dead man. Every dead man she had met had been walking, but this one was even deader than them for sure. Had Barry killed it?

"Did you, Barry?" She asked from no one in particular, looking around, seeing all the old armour and the spears placed in two identical rows on both sides of the corridor. The she chuckled, playing with the thought of Barry really being there with her. But it was a little scary as well, because at times she really felt like he was walking behind her, his calm steps following her around, but when she turned around the corridors were always empty, booming with silence.

But there really was something there. And it wasn't Barry, because Barry didn't have eight feet.

**Barry, a Lock Pick?**

There it is, sorry it's a bit short, but it's better than nothing, right? By the way, if you're interested in participating in an interactive story, my cousin's writing one on her website. Check out Dark Moon Crystales's website (address can be found on her profile) if you'd like to know more.

Anyway, thanks for reading, I'd love your reviews!


	4. Lost and Found and Lost Sanity

**Author:** Panika feat. Pyres

**Music:** Die Prinzen - Popmusik

**Notes: **Sorry, I took my time again. I've just been busy with school and everything. It seems like I have less and less time to read and write fics… And I love this fic because it's my first horror fic and I'm really putting a lot of effort into it. If you like this one, read _The Swans Sing When They Die _as well. I've been into one-shots a lot lately, so I think there'll be more of them too…

**Reviewers:** Thank you so much for your comments!

_Simon:_ Well, I haven't played the original, but I've seen them compared to each other on IGN. You'd never believe it's the same game! And it has some extra plot too about Trevor's daughter Lisa.

_Selphiefan 89_: Me too! I can't stand spiders! Did you know that more than 80 of people are more afraid of spiders than death? Amazing!

_JoJo10:_ I hope I can make her believable; writing about insanity is not easy, especially if it's a lock pick she's talking to… And Chris… He might be alive, but I can't say that yet…

_SniperR:_ Thank you! Yup, I didn't like it either that they didn't react to their friends' deaths. The only part where Jill showed some emotions was on the balcony where that dead man tried to attack her, but I can't remember his name.

_Salem__ Saori:_ Thank you so much, it's always great to hear that I'm succeeding in portraying her feelings. I always try to distinguish myself from others, that was the base when I started writing; I wanted an original writing style, like no one else.

---

"Barry!" Jill rejoiced as she saw something glitter in front of an old mirror and realized it was ammo. Without a doubt she thought it was Barry, who had walked in that corridor and thought about her as he had went. He had placed the ammo on the floor, hoping that she would find it. She glanced at the lock pick resting on her hips and smiled thankfully. She was afraid to talk to him, knowing that only crazy people talk to objects, but she had to thank him just in case he really was there, inside the lock pick somehow.

When she got up, she noticed a golden arrow on a pedestal, it had a beautiful green head, it reminded her of an emerald, but it surely wasn't one. She couldn't name the specific stone in her mind, but it didn't really matter. She was pretty sure Barry would've known, but she was a little afraid to ask, because then someone might hear her and think she's crazy. She took it, wondering if she would find it useful later.

She walked to the other end of the corridor, finding only locked doors.

"Dammit." Jill cursed as she tried to open the locks with the lock pick. Sadly the lock was too complicated for the lock pick to open it and she hissed frustratedly: "Come on, Barry, give me a hand!" Right after that she covered her mouth with her hands, glancing quickly around to see was anyone there to laugh at her. Maybe Chris was there, following her around, watching how she went crazy, little by little in the madhouse.

Maybe he was behind a mirror, hiding in her image, knowing that she wouldn't care about the mirrors while she was trying to get out. Maybe he was standing there behind the corner, watching how she was doing, using her as a shield against the zombies, those living deads that walked around the house of hell.

Her thoughts drifted more and more away from the lock she was trying to pick. She was _sure _Chris was there, behind the mirrors, watching her like a pervert in the bushes watching little girls go home from school, their little skirts showing a little more than what's appropriate. She knew Chris was decent, but the thought was disturbing. She closed her eyes, grimacing. The lock pick wasn't working; it made her irritated; as if she didn't have enough problems already trying to survive with the zombies.

She dropped the lock pick on the floor, cursing and ran back, shouting:

"Chris!! Stop playing around with me!" She shouted, not realizing that her own imagination had created the idea of Chris spying on her. When she got to the other end of the corridor where the dead man lay, she turned around many times to see was Chris hiding somewhere, maybe behind a wall or a mirror. "Chris! This isn't funny anymore!"

She took her gun and shot the mirror in front of her and it broke into millions of pieces, raining on the floor, reflecting the dim lighting of the room around as their death cries. Jill looked through the empty mirror frame at the dirty yellow wall, Chris wasn't there. She narrowed her eyes and ran to the next mirror and shot it into pieces as well, enjoying watching the shiny pieces rain down to the floor like flower petals when flowers die.

She growled as Chris wasn't there either. She ran to the next mirror in uncontrollable anger and jumped against it, breaking it with her body. As the glass broke, she could feel the shards cutting her face and hands and then she hit the wall behind the mirror, all the mirror pieces only embedded deeper into her skin. For a while she held herself against the wall, realizing what she was doing; looking for Chris, who was _dead. _

Jill sat down on the mirror pieces, pulling her feet against her chest and rocked back and forth, muttering something calming. She was really going crazy. She had just broken all the mirrors because she had thought a dead man had been hiding behind them, watching her go around. She sat there for a while, staring emptily in front of her, trying to accept her mind slipping away from her, but it was so hard. She _knew _she was going crazy, but she just couldn't stop it or at times she couldn't say when she was doing something mindless.

She sighed as she got up, her hand and face ached like hell, she could feel the pieces inside her skin as she tried to touch her face with her bleeding hands.

"I'm going to kill myself at this rate." She said as if she was predicting her own future. Then she took her emergency bandage from her pocket along with the herbs she had found. She ate some of the herbs, feeling their healing effect on her tingling wounds right away; first came numbness as the pain disappeared, then she started to feel very calm and relaxed. She tied her hands with the bandage and tried to get the biggest mirror pieces off them and her face, but couldn't do much without a mirror.

Still bleeding, Jill walked to the locked door where she had lost it for a while. She picked the lock pick from the ground very gently, avoiding touching it with her nails not to scratch it. She asked if it was okay in her mind, but was afraid to say it out loud after all she had done in the corridor. She placed it on her hips, patting it reflexively when she started to walk back towards the main hall to find some other rooms to go into.

She closed the large doors, sighing. Once again she was in the main hall, not knowing where to go. She sat on the stairs leading to the second floor and looked at her feet with a solemn expression, wondering how she could prevent or slow down her insanity. If she could somehow force the horror away from her mind, she would be safe from insanity, but there was one but in that plan; what if she couldn't erase those thoughts after getting out of the mansion? She would be trapped in her fairyland for her whole life, unable to tell truth form stories.

Jill dismissed that idea. It was no use trying to deny facts. There were rather gross dead people walking around, but the bright side of it was that they weren't fast or intelligent as they hunted for human flesh. She encouraged herself with the thought that she could always run away from them, because she was smarter than them and she was faster than them. She stood up, filled with determination once again.

"Barry, let's kick ass!" She declared like a school girl, pointing at the ceiling with her finger, new energy and hope running in her veins. But she still had no place to go.

Jill tried all of the doors at the first floor, but they were all locked and on their locks were carved different kinds of symbols, representing a sword, a shield, a helmet and armour. She immediately knew that she would need all kinds of fancy keys to get into those rooms, but as she thought of that, she also realized that they weren't locked for fun. Every time doors are locked, there's a reason to it.

There might be something even more hideous than those corpses roaming on the corridors, raised from the dead. She could imagine some other human-eating monsters, huge alligators that had grown in the depths of the sewers underground, their sharp teeth ready to bite off her hand if she got too close.

She tried to laugh at her thoughts to lighten the mood, but her laughter was crackling with fear. She knew that Barry wouldn't definitely like her talking about scary things while they were fighting for their lives in a scary mansion full of undead, walking carcasses. She patted him again on her hips and continued up the stairs. She almost passed one door, hidden poorly in a painting.

As she opened it, she could feel cold night air gushing in, she could smell the rain, but it wasn't really raining. She pushed the door completely open to get outside and inhaled deeply, almost devouring the fresh night air. She closed her eyes and could feel the wind cleansing her lungs and her thoughts, washing away the monster called insanity in her mind. She felt good.

When she finally opened her eyes, reality stroke back and it stroke hard. A graveyard opened in front of her. It was like from some horror film, gloomy and dark; some of the gravestones were leaning and covered with moss. Hay grew everywhere; no one had taken care of it in a very long time. Jill couldn't help the fear crawling up her spine like a snake, its cold touch freezing her muscles.

She took a deep breath once again, hoping that their coward pilot would fly over the mansion and see her there, waving her hands and waiting to be rescued. She ran down the stairs and gazed into the sky, waiting for a sound or a light. But it was cold and the cold made her shiver even more than the fear she was experiencing. She waited for a long while, warming herself by jumping around and blowing hot air on her hands, but then she decided that she would need to go inside and help herself.

She noticed a large tomb in the end of the graveyard and walked towards it, wondering if it would lead to a secret passageway out of the cursed mansion waiting for her to come back inside, glaring at her back with its thousand dark windows. She glanced over her shoulder at times to make sure it wasn't going to eat her while she examined the beautiful carving on the tombstone.

There was an angel, a plump child with wings, readying his bow to shoot an arrow without a head. On the arrowhead's place was a triangular recess, matching the arrowhead on her golden arrow. She ripped it off the golden arrow and threw the arrow on the ground, placing the green arrowhead in the recess. Almost immediately the tomb started to change, revealing stairs going deep underground. A dim, but homely fire burned in the small torch on the wall.

Jill hesitated for a long time, it was cold and down there it looked warm, but the stairway down was narrow and caused her to wait for something horrible to come out of there. But nothing came, no matter how long she waited, her hand resting on her gun on her hips. She started to descend to the grave slowly, jumping every time the fire crackled in the torch.

She came to a cave-like place, where fire raged in a large heater, creating dancing shadows all around the gloomy room. On the wall to her left were four faces, each one of them was missing something, one didn't have a nose, one didn't have a mouth and so on. On the floor under them was a piece of paper and she picked it up, wondering what it was.

_V-ACT_

Under the heading someone had written in a shaky handwriting: _I stole this from the laboratory, never ever use the masks, __Ada__, escape and protect your loved ones._

She frowned, but read the paper that looked like a report of something.

_There is now evidence that when the host loses consciousness, the body  
goes into a dormant state. During this time the virus becomes active  
and rapidly transforms and reconstructs the basic composition of the  
body._

_The host eventually mutated into a humanoid creature. (We call them V-  
ACTs)_

_Its speed and amazing muscular development are particularly noteworthy.  
After transformation, it becomes more agile and aggressive._

_Already four of our researchers have died from trying to feed it,  
turning the place into an instant blood bath. (Ever since this tragic  
and barbaric accident, we have decided to call its kind "Crimson Heads")_

_That dangerous and precious prototype specimen can't be left there. We  
have to figure out a way to deal with it. Termination is definitely not  
an option._

_We finally decided to freeze the specimen and confine the body inside  
the basement of the backyard cemetery._

She lifted her gaze from the paper, realizing now what was going on. The Umbrella corporation had a laboratory somewhere in the mansion and they had been doing experiments on animals… or could it be humans? Her eyes widened and she read it once more with growing horror; no one could do something that inhuman! But it could explain the zombies walking on the hallways in the mansion, wanting to eat her. She swallowed nervously, almost seeing the laboratory in her eyes, the white walls, the hospital beds, the men in green handling surgical instruments, the screams echoing in the hallways where no one cared about the victims' fates.

She could hear the screams in her head, they tore her heart apart. The screams had gone unnoticed, no one had cared about the test subjects' lives or families as they had operated on them, done their inhuman tests. But what had they tried to create? Only zombies? Or were the zombies only tests gone horribly wrong?

Jill felt the fear overcoming her and she gasped, burying her face into her hands, trying to smother the loud sobs she couldn't help. She was panicking because of what she had learned. Those zombies had once been humans, used as test subjects against their will. She fell on her knees, trying to control herself, but at the moment it felt impossible. She put her other hand on the lock pick on her waist, whispering comforting words to Barry although she knew he wasn't there, but it helped her.

She took the lock pick in her arms and pressed it against her chest, hoping that Barry was there to comfort her. Even more than that, she hoped that Chris would walk down the stairs and tell her he was alive and well. Then she would run to him and hug him and kiss him and she would tell him that she loved him over and over again, never wanting to let go of him. But there was no one to comfort her, only the cold lock pick in her hand, its metallic touch was cold against her skin.

After a long while she got on her feet, finally wondering who had left the report there and written the text. The one who had written it had mentioned someone called 'Ada' and she had no idea who that was, there was no one in the Alpha or Bravo team named that. So it had to be someone who had been here and had had access to the reports, maybe a scientist; the only sane one. And that report was proof someone had tried to escape the madhouse. She put the report into her pocket and looked around a bit more. In the end of the basement was a pedestal and above it was a coffin hanging from the ceiling with four chains.

Jill tried to think that she was only going crazy, but the coffin wouldn't disappear. It seemed to wait for her to come closer, close enough to be devoured by the rusty lid. Or by something hiding behind the lid, so monstrous that the scientists had been forced to seal it there.

She looked at it for a while with fear, hoping that it wouldn't fall on her when she went to the pedestal to see what was on it. The coffin hung from the ceiling peacefully as if it was empty as she got to the pedestal and took the book, still looking at the coffin. It made a squeaking sound as she took the book and she screamed, running all the way back to the mansion and closing the door behind her.

Jill breathed heavily as she closed the door, feeling safer. She promised to herself that she would never in her life go back there again unless she had no other choice.

"Never again… never…" She said to to the main hall, it seemed empty, but she could feel it living, watching her behind its kind façade. Now that she knew its horrible secret, it seemed as if it was watching her even more closely, locking its door tightly to avoid her escape. Gladly she still had Barry with her, he would make everything good again.

"He's a lock pick, a lock pick, a lock pick! Barry! Oh, Barry!" She said frustratedly, but covered her mouth with her hand again, not wanting to say out loud what she was thinking. She would do everything to hold onto her sanity.

Jill looked around with a scared expression as she went to the stairs and sat down on one of them, examining the book she had got from the basement. It was purple and had lots of decorations on the cover and the name; Book of Curse. She hesitated for a while before she tried to open it and noticed a key on the book's back. When she removed it, the book opened. She examined the key first, it had a sword symbol on it; maybe it would help her to the other rooms in the mansion. She put it into her pocket and started reading the book.

_The four masks,  
a mask that speaks no evil...  
a mask that smells no evil...  
a mask that sees no evil...  
a mask that cannot speak, smell, or see evil..._

_When all four fall into place,  
evil will awaken._

It didn't make any sense. Or was it about the four faces in the basement? Then it would mean that she would need to go back there to put those masks on the faces and face the evil it spoke of. But on the report someone had told that 'Ada' never to use the masks. She sighed, closing her eyes, not wanting to let her imagination take over and show her images of her fears, taking deep breaths.

Suddenly Jill felt something grab her from behind, but before she got to fight back, two hairy legs squeezed her hands against her sides so tightly that she had to hold her breath to stay alive. She screamed as she saw them, realizing immediately that they surely didn't belong to any human, they were a spider's legs.

Jill screamed, fighting against the spider effortlessly, feeling how it's furry fangs embedded into her neck and poison ran into her veins freely. Then the spider let go and crawled to wait for her to go unconscious to the roof, watching her with its red eyes. She took her gun and shot it, after a few misses she hit it and it staggered before falling on the ground where she kept shooting it until it twitched for the final time and died. Then she put her gun on its place on her hips and fell down the stairs, unconscious, the poison spreading calmly around her body.

---

Yet another chapter done. Thanks for reading, your reviews would be great!


	5. Barry Impersonating Barry

**Barry Impersonating Barry**

**Author:** Panika feat. Pyres

**Music:** Bon Jovi - Runaway

**Notes:** Gee, six weeks since the last update! I am so sorry! I know, I'm lazy too… and I was sick too. Aaaanyway, here's the next chapter, hope you like it!

**Reviewers:** Thanks you so much!

_JoJo10:_ Wow, thank so much! I'm really flattered by what you said! It's great to hear that I can write something so creepy that you can't read it alone in a dark room, that's exactly what I'm trying to do! This chapter though will be a little less scary because I'm adding both Barry and Wesker to the story to make it more interesting (and saner). –laughs-

_Selphiefan__ 89:_ I get dark and depressing at times too, but that's when I write the best horror fics! Graveyards _are _cool, especially with vampires! Oh, I just love vampires! Thanks so much for the praises!

_op_: Yeah, that bothered me too, it was the reason why I started writing this fic in the first place. As I played the game whenever I met a new enemy I was like WTF for a while and wondered how Jill could be so calm with giant mutant frogs. –laughs- Hopefully I'm being realistic with her.

_SniperR:_ Thanks, I'm doing my best with her insanity! Believe me; it's not easy although it might seem like it. (meaning _I'm _not crazy! Really!!) I've gone through the game only once… (Pitiful I know) but good that I could surprise you! I hate predictable stories, so I try not to write them.

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Jill woke up on the main hall's floor, feeling her body rioting against her. Her stomach turned like there were ten snakes inside her, constantly biting her insides, her brain was like poured full of sticky porridge for all of her thoughts seemed to distort to mindless monstrosities. She tried to sit up, but her body didn't agree with her. She tried again and was able to move her fingers. Slowly she managed to turn her head to watch as her fingers danced in her hand, faster and faster.

As she watched them, she thought. She had got a book from the basement where a coffin had been, found a key on the back of it, then a huge spider had attacked her. She tried to make a disbelieving face, because it was ridiculous to think about a spider at least her own size to have attacked her, because spiders were actually calm creatures, the biggest of them was the size of a plate, found somewhere in Australia.

No matter how much she didn't want to believe it, it felt real and the poison in her body felt definitely real. She had to believe that something horrible was really going on in this mansion. It had been something so horrible that it had turned the mansion itself, the lifeless materials, into a malevolent monster. And she couldn't run from that monster, she could always run away from the stupid zombies, but running away _inside_ something wasn't possible. It could see her all the time and it watched her from the shadows with its invisible eyes, breathing labouredly. The mansion seemed to want her to join the undead living inside it, prevent her from uncovering its secrets, uncovering what kind of monstrosities Sir Spencer had wanted to create.

_Maybe it's in love with him_, she thought sarcastically. Her fingers were now listening to her orders completely. She watched them a while longer just in case, because she didn't want to fall down in front of one of those moving carcasses offering her body to it as a nice snack. She took a stern look on her face; she could be poisoned, but she would survive. This was only slowing her down, not stopping her. She had to control her sanity and now race against the poison of the spider.

After a while she was able to get up on her flabby legs, heaving a relieved sigh. She sat down on the stairs taking to the second-floor balcony, looking at the key she had recovered. It had a small sword engraving on it, otherwise it was blank. It took Jill a long time to see what the engraving was, because the poison affected her sight. She frowned, why a sword emblem? Did it mean that there were other keys as well and that she had to find them all? She sighed; it would really take forever to get out of the mansion.

She refused to fall into despair and thought about where she hadn't been. Barry on her waist told her that the room with the sculpture of a woman drawing water had a locked door; maybe the sword key would be useful there. Jill nodded, but didn't want to go there. She wiped the sweat off her forehead lazily.

"Maybe I should try the second floor first." She said and Barry was quiet in agreement. Satisfied, she climbed the stairs clumsily, helping herself with the walls and tried one of the doors, but it was locked. A small engraving of a shield was on its doorknob.

_Sword and shield keys_… she thought. _What kind of a puzzle is this mansion? _

She tried the next door, smothering her thoughts screaming about death. It was safe in the main hall, it was bright, it was warm, _why_should she go wondering off? Surely chicken-heart Vickers had asked for back-up and reinforcements were coming their way. But could she trust that? Should she stay in the main hall, waiting for her death by the walking undead or just by starvation? She didn't want to die there, she would fight for her life and she would make it out alive.

"Barry, I'll go first." Jill said as she noticed a door wasn't unlocked. First she opened it only a little, trying to conclude where there one of those zombies there or maybe something even more horrible. A smell of rotting flesh spilled into the main hall, accompanied with the smell of strong chemicals. Jill grimaced at the smell, it was horrible. The zombies had to have been dead long ago before they or the Bravos got there. She had to close the door as she heard a soft thump as one of those creatures hit something, probably furniture and fell over.

For a while she wanted to use Barry's plan. But as she thought about it; the windows, the mutant dogs right outside…She didn't want to use the first floor, maybe it was instinct or maybe it was something far more primitive, something she had inherited from the very first humanoids.

Jill heaved a heavy sigh, patted Barry on her waist and tore the door open, pointing ahead of her with her gun. She had come into a dark corridor, narrow enough to make her feel highly uncomfortable and panic itself was running up her spine. On the floor were blood splatters, some of them even on the walls. She looked at the corridor with fear, wanting to run away. Because not only was the corridor smelly and disgusting, there were sounds of something dragging itself towards her, soft hungry moans.

She stared into the dark corridor, her eyes adjusting to the dimness, seeing how after a door on the right wall the corridor took a turn to the left and that zombie was coming from there. She tried to focus to shoot it, but her vision wouldn't give in. She was standing steadily, but her hands trembled. She knew she needed an antidote, but she had to manage until she found some kind of a place with any medicines. Even the normal aspiring would help her growing headache.

The creature came to her view as a shadow against the dirty green wallpaper of the corridor. She tried to aim for its head, but wasn't sure would she hit so she let it come closer. And the closer it got, the stronger the smell got and she could feel the sandwich she had eaten wanting to come back up. Drops of sweat ran down her forehead, over her cheeks, glittering in the light coming from the main hall. As the zombie got closer, she started to feel nauseated, the poison was affecting her faster than what she had thought.

Panicking, she shot twice. There was a soft sound as one of the bullets met with the zombie. A long silence fell over the corridor and main hall. Jill stood at the doorway, one foot in the main hall to be ready to run away, one in the new corridor in case she had killed the zombie and it was safe now. Suddenly there were two other shots, in the same corridor and moans of another zombies as they fell. Jill stood still, her heart beating furiously on her chest. She held her gun in front of her, listening if there was someone else in the corridor with her, someone who had a gun or had she heard things in her head again?

"Chris?" She called; her voice was husky and quivered with fear.

There was a silence when nothing happened. Then a surprised voice asked: "Jill?"

"W-who is it?" She asked, taking a step backwards, still ready to shoot.

"Barry."

Jill smiled happily for a while, but then she remembered that Barry was with her. He was there, he was securing her back, like they had agreed. He had been with her for a while now so he couldn't possibly come from there. She lifted the gun again as that impostor walked from around the corner with a fake smile plastered on his lips. She tried to target him, but suddenly her legs gave in and she fell on the floor, firing in panic.

The shot missed Barry, but hit the zombie lying on the floor. The big man flinched as he saw Jill crumble in front of him like that, but it wasn't that surprising… that mansion could drive anyone crazy and drain anyone empty of their poor sanity. Gladly he had lived the golden age of zombie-films and watched them with his friends, he hadn't been half as startled as Jill had probably been when she had encountered her first zombie.

He ran to her as she fell and lifted her into his arms, she was sweating, breathing labouredly, her eyes were rolling wildly, she was holding onto her gun furiously, her fists where completely white. She was obviously poisoned, he judged, she had a fever and it was rising fast. He would need to take her to the Western Side of the mansion where the small storage room was. She twitched in his arms, repeating something fast without sound, almost frantically as if she was trying to perform magic.

He carried her through the second-floor balcony of the dining hall towards the small storage room full of medical supplies, thanking his good memory of places. Otherwise he would've been a goner a long time ago in the mansion. He had been left behind by the others when they had ran for the mansion and when he had tried to get in, someone had been holding the door and no matter how much he had screamed that the dogs were going to eat him, no one let him in.

He still had much life in him, he hadn't given up just because monster-dogs had surrounded him and had been attacking him one by one. Barry had thought about his family, his lovely wife and his two beautiful daughters, for them he had to live. He had fired the dogs for a time that felt endless when he had seen the wines stretching their strong arms to a balcony on the second floor of the mansion. He had climbed them up to the balcony, heaving a relieved sigh. The dogs hadn't really been much of a relaxation, but at least the bastards hadn't bit him. He had reloaded his colt before he had unlocked the door from the balcony to the main hall and gone inside to meet the others.

When he had come to the main hall, no one had been there. At first he had decided to wait for someone to come back, but then Wesker had appeared, his dark shades had let through no emotions. They had 'talked' more or less and after that Barry had decided that he would avoid the rest of the team if they were even alive because he was a bad liar and his family was on the line. Too bad he had happened to come to the same corridor as Jill. He wouldn't have showed himself, but when Jill had shot the zombie and hit it barely, he had decided to see what was going on and was glad he had done that. Without him she would be a Jill sandwich now.

He opened the door to the storage room with one huge hand and closed it with a kick as he entered, Jill laying motionlessly in his arms. She had passed out a while ago, her temperature rising furiously. Her body had joined the battle of her life with sleep and fever although she would get antidote as soon as he would find it.

He laid her on the bed gently as if she had been a daughter of his, hoping that his two sweet daughters were really alright as he hurried to the shelves full of all kinds of medicines and chemicals. There were all kinds of chemicals from Aqua Regia to medicine drugs and from some bizarre chemicals called V-17 to the more common aspirin. He had no idea what kind of poison was she in, his specialty was guns not biochemistry. He found himself hoping that Rebecca Chambers would be around, she was only 18 but boy, she knew _everything_ about medicines and biochemistry and all that stuff that had names too hard for Barry to pronounce. He took a random bottle that read only 'antidote' on the side and forced a pill down Jill's throat.

Jill woke up on the small bed in the medical storage room, she was still feeling nauseous, but it was passing slowly. Her vision was better already, her body didn't feel reluctant to her brain's orders at all, it was as if a miracle had happened. Or maybe she had got an antidote. She sighed relievedly, now she was able to get back to work and find a way out with Barry.

She turned her head slowly and saw a big man standing at the cupboard, looking at the different kinds of little bottles, probably full of antidotes and chemical liquids used in some monstrous tests. It took her a while to realize who it was since he had his back turned to her, but when it occurred to her, she gasped.

"Barry!"

Barry turned to look at Jill, a smile spreading on his face. He scratched his beard with one giant hand as he said: "Jill! Feeling better?" ¨

Jill looked at him with wide, scared eyes for a long time. She was confused, Barry was still resting on her waist in her belt, but there was this other man who was Barry too. She was more than sure that he was Barry, no one else had the same kind of a colt as he did. At least not in the S.T.A.R.S., but maybe he wasn't from the S.T.A.R.S. maybe he was an outsider, brought here to kill her.

Jill panicked, but wouldn't let it show on her face because she knew that Barry was there, on her waist and this man couldn't possibly be Barry. He could look like him and he could talk like him, he could fool everyone else, but he didn't know that the real Barry was with her. She put her hand reflexively on Barry and her other hand on her gun, sitting up.

"Y-yeah. I feel fine." She said, the fever was gone and her vision was getting clearer by the minute.

"Good. You would've been a goner if I wouldn't have saved you." Barry said gently, like a father to his daughter, taking a step closer. Jill took a hold of her gun, following his movement closely.

"Who are you?" She asked, knowing that she was poking the sleeping lion with a stick, but she was ready if he tried to attack her.

Barry looked surprised. He smiled a confused smile, spreading his hands in the air as he said: "I'm Barry. Did the poison hurt your memory?"

"You're not Barry." Jill said calmly, taking her gun and pointing him with it.

"Then who am I?" He asked, fear flashing in his eyes but he tried to hide it by leaning his head. Jill had obviously suffered a lot since she they had arrived into the estate, but it was no wonder. Anyone would go crazy just thinking about the zombies. The idea was not to think about them. That was how he had remained sane and he was proud of himself.

"I don't know." She said, still pointing at him.

"Jill, put the gun down." He said calmly.

"No." She answered defiantly.

"Jill, I'm not going to hurt you, I'm Barry. I'm your buddy. I just saved you and you should be thankful instead of pointing at me with your Beretta." Barry said, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. If she was going crazy as it seemed, she could be very unpredictable like loonies normally and she could shoot him just for the sheer fun of it.

"I'm very grateful for saving me, Mr, but it doesn't mean that you can pose as my friend." Jill answered, narrowing her eyes. She was targeting. God, Barry thought, she was targeting him to shoot him.

Quickly he jumped to her and she shot, but missed him. He took the Beretta from her and threw it into the corner, under the cupboard. He smiled victoriously, he had just saved his and probably her life as well.

A shock of electricity flashed through his vision, his muscles stopped moving for a while. In his arm was horrible pain, paralyzing pain, but he couldn't say where it came from. He backed away from Jill, holding his arm. As he looked at her, he saw a stun gun in her hands, her face was furious, she was glancing at her gun at times, hoping for a good moment to go and get it. He looked at her with wide eyes, he couldn't believe that she thought that he was some kind of an impostor, acting Barry just because he wanted to get close to her.

Nevertheless, he wouldn't let himself get down. He took his colt and pointed at her with it as he got her Beretta and put it into his belt. He walked closer to her, still pointing at her with his colt as he said:

"Jill, I don't want to do this." He said sincerely. He really hated pointing at his friends with his gun, because he was against mindless killing, but she was going too far. He wasn't going to shoot her anyway, but this was the only way to make her harmless against her teammates. "Now give me the stun gun."

Jill seemed to estimate the possibilities for a while, a certain uncertainty in her eyes until she gave in and handed him the stun gun. He put it on his belt as well, smiling to her gently as he put away his colt as well.

"I'm sorry, Jill, but I don't want to be afraid that you might kill me when I've got enough to worry about with those zombies roaming around." He said gently. "Now we should be moving on if we want to get out of here alive." He turned to leave, assuming that she would follow him, but she just sat at the bed, looking at him defiantly. For a while he waited for her to come on her own, but when she wouldn't, he went to her and grabbed his wrist with one hand and pulled her on her feet.

"We have to get out of here. I'm going to help you out of here." He said clearly as if he was talking to a foreigner who couldn't understand much English. Jill tried to free herself, but couldn't. She started to scratch him, but he didn't care, he just sighed and started pulling her after him out of the storage room.

---

Wesker chuckled. He had heard the whole thing and was more than satisfied with it. He had brought the S.T.A.R.S. here to die and they were doing a great job. So far the whole Bravo team was dead, he had personally made sure of the two survivors, Rebecca Chambers and Richard Aiken, from the Aplhas only Barry and Jill were alive for sure. He wasn't sure about Chris but he hadn't heard any voices so far, maybe the airforce boy was already dead.

He had thought that killing Jill would be the hardest part and that he would personally see into it because she was cool and calm and she could handle many opponents at the same time, she worked quickly in danger and kept her cool even if everything looked hopeless. Of course, he hadn't thought how Jill would react to the living dead. She could be calm and cool when normal psychopaths tried to kill her and her teammates, but walking carcasses were too much for her closed mind. She was clearly losing it, Wesker remembered how he had been spying on her and she had totally lost it and broken all of the mirrors and shouted Chris's name. Then she had been talking alone, but still to Barry.

Barry had and still was the biggest worry to him. He was blackmailing him to help him, but as soon as he would be useless he would need to kill him immediately to avoid any of the things happened in the mansion from getting to the press. If the press got to know what had happened in the Umbrella estate, the whole Raccoon City would panic, maybe even the fancy FBI would be involved and Sir Spencer would definitely catch him and make him a test subject among the others.

He didn't care how long Barry would survive, of course it would be a great help if he lived to help him with Lisa, that screaming bitch, but if Jill killed him because she was going crazy, Wesker wouldn't give a damn. It would only take slightly longer to make it to the laboratory, but it wouldn't stop him completely.

Wesker loaded his gun quietly, waiting for Barry to leave the stairs so that he could continue searching for the crests he needed to get into the laboratory, knowing that Jill was no threat. Not even if she made it alive, she would still be crazy as hell and no one would believe her feverish ramblings about man-eating creatures hidden inside the mansion of Umbrella. She would be taken into an asylum right away where she could talk to her fellow loonies, but no one else would listen.

He ran swiftly to the end of the corridor, chuckling at how perfectly everything was turning out and disappeared through the door before Barry walked up; pulling Jill after him.

"Come now, Jill."

"Let go of me! Let go, you impersonator!" Jill fought against him furiously, but he was much stronger, he could pull her behind him with only one hand. Even though he was pulling her roughly behind him, he made sure he wasn't hurting her by pressing her hand too much.

"I'm Barry! I am _BARRY BURTON_!" He turned to her, lifting her hand above her head, forcing her to look into his eyes. For a while they tried to stare each other down, Barry's gaze was fatherly soft and Jill's eyes flamed with defiance. With one hard kick she tried to hit his weak spot, but he lifted her in the air from her hand, dodging her kick.

"Snap out of it, Jill!" He commanded.

"No! Let go of me! You're hurting me!" Jill screamed. He put her down, but wouldn't let her go.

"Where's Barry?" He asked from her, looking directly into her eyes.

Jill hesitated for a while, but realized then that she couldn't run away from the question. But no matter what, she couldn't tell this impostor where Barry was, he would only take him with him and kill him when she wasn't looking. She wasn't going to allow that. "He's following us."

"Where is he?" Barry asked again, he wanted to prove to Jill that he was the only Barry around here and that whatever had made her snap would be destroyed. He wasn't just going to watch as his good friend was loosing it completely, giving in to the mansion's illusions and insanity.

Jill spat on his face, a victorious smile on her face as she jeered: "You'll never find him! He's too smart for you!"

Barry could feel adrenaline flowing in his veins as Jill just wouldn't accept reality. He wanted to have a punching bag and hit it so hard that his hand's bones would break, but he wouldn't let it show on his face. He sighed heavily to let the anger out and started pulling her after him again. She almost fell on the stairs, but he grabbed her right in time.

Only one thing fell from her belt. Jill watched as Barry fell on the stairs and bounced off them with a _clank_, hitting the lower and lower step until he hit the floor, gliding to the corner. There he remained motionless, his face distorted into a scream of pain. She hadn't been able to do anything but watch as he had fallen. Had she killed him? Had the impostor killed him? As her imagination's horrors reached her mind and she understood them, a desperate cry escaped her lips, echoing in the empty corridor like a death cry. Even the thought about losing Barry made tears fow down her cheeks, because she knew that then she was alone against the zombies, alone against the impostor and the mansion. Chris had disappeared, Wesker was nowhere to be found, Barry seemed dead... It hurt her sanity, parts of her mnd just crumbled away as they couldn't take the information, then came the anger.

Barry turned to look what had happened as Jill screamed; she was looking down into the first floor with hide eyes, a sea of tears lingering in them, pouring down her cheeks like rivers. At times he could see a shadow of a grimace of anger, but it was gone so fast that he thought he had imagined it. He tried to see what she had seen, but there was no one there.

Before he could do anything more, Jill started to fight against him even more ferociously than before, screaming mindlessly, tears flowing down her cheeks. He wasn't sure, but he thought that between the cries he could distinguish the words 'dead' and 'your fault', but he had no idea what he had done.

Something was glittering in the corner of the first floor. His lock pick glittered in the dim light of the corridor, reflecting the light to the ceiling. A thought passed his mind; had Jill found his lock pick and just started to assume that he was it? It did make sense, seeing that she was going nuts and she was beating him right now on the chest with her small slender fists, trying desperately to hurt him.

He pulled her into his hug gently, holding her both hands in his right gigantic hand, holding her safe with the other. She screamed and tried to bite him, kicked and yelled, tried to escape, but he wouldn't let her. He held her against him until she didn't have any strength left anymore and she started sobbing uncontrollably against his chest, still chanting those words he had heard her say before.

He felt bad for her. It was wrong that she was going crazy without even understanding it. He wanted to help her, but could he? He didn't know if he could ever get her trust, if he could snap her out of it and bring her back to reality. Maybe she was already lost to insanity, but at least he could protect her and get her out of here to give the proper medical attention she would need to get a grasp of reality again. But as long as they were here, it seemed hopeless. His only teammate he had found alive was going crazy and had tried to kill him, it didn't really look good.

Then he realized it. Maybe he could prove her that if her precious Barry was really that lock pick in her eyes she would understand that he wasn't an impostor. Then he could give her her gun back and they could make it out of here surely. Together they were stronger than alone, that was for sure. Barry sighed, holding Jill in the ominous corridor, waiting for her to stop crying.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he had a feeling that the mansion was following their movements with hidden eyes, breathing hotly into the back of his neck, laughing in the darkness at what it had succeeded to do to Jill. Maybe Jill had only been the first one to give in, maybe the mansion had planned it all and it was only showing off with its first victim.

And how it laughed, how malevolently it laughed and jeered them.

---

Another chapter done! If you like this story, please read my one-shot _The Swans Sing When They Die_, it's a lot like this, I'm very proud of the way I managed to write Moira's diary when she goes all whacko.

Thanks for reading, I'd love your comments!


	6. Escape and Certain Death

**Escape and Certain Death**

Hi, everyone. I'm sorry I took so long, but I've been busy with lots of exams and everything lately. And then there was Christmas with all the presents and all that hassle... And of course, my cousin got RE: Zero for Christmas and I've been playing it with her like crazy. -laughs- Hope you understand!

**Reviewers:** Thank you so much!

_Selphiefan 89:_ Thanks for saying that! Yeah, it's really sad how people can just go crazy. My grandfather did but then he died of cancer.

_SniperR:_ Yeah -laughs- it's going to be pretty hard for Barry to prove that he's not an impostor because Jill's crazy. I needed to bring Barry into the story for a moment because the plot is pretty hard to write without any sane people in the fic. I don't think I'll make Barry go insane, but we'll see... Thanks for saying that!

_JoJo10:_ -laughs- poor you! Now I want chocolate chip cookies too... Mmm.... cookies... Anyway, porridge is umm... that soft food madeby boiling oatmeal and stuff until it becomes all sticky and thick. It's really good when you put a lot of milk and sugar in it. Thanks for the praises! Sadly this chapter isn't scary either, butIthink it's important to have a plot rather than just having her run around, going crazier and crazier.

---

Barry let Jill go and she rolled down the stairs to the first floor, groaning. Before she even noticed the pain, she reached out to the lock pick, pulling it close against her. Barry heard her whisper to it soothingly, her feverish ramblings sounded like she was casting a spell.

Barry ran down to her, asking if she was okay. She hissed at him like a feral cat, trying to scratch him with her nails. He backed away, watching her go to the corner on all fours. There she turned around, looking at him with fierce eyes.

"You'll never get us!" She said, her voice crackling with anger and fear.

"I'm not trying to kill you." Barry answered calmly. He just wanted to get out of the mansion.

"Stop messing with my head!!" Jill screamed as she took a hold of her head. It seemed like she was in great pain, but he knew that the only pain she experienced was mental. She couldn't grasp the concept of reality anymore, she had created her own nightmarish world where zombies roam and nothing good exists. The only thing that was keeping her from autism was that lock pick she held in her hands, her Barry.

He sighed as he took a step closer, looking at her calmly. "Jill, we both know that together we can make it out of here. If I leave you here now without any weapons you'll be dead in less than five minutes."

She glared at him for a while before she really understood the situation. He was right, no matter how much she wanted him to be wrong. She and Barry were going to die here if she wouldn't let the impostor take her somewhere. Her mind showed her images of him killing her by shooting her in the back or strangling her to death when she had done everything he had wanted her to. Fear tingled in her lower back like needles, making it hard to decide. Either way she was going to die, which one she wanted more? Did she want to die like Chris, a zombie eating his flesh or by strangling?

She got up, slowly. After a while of glaring at Barry she finally gave in.

"I don't really have a choice." She said, narrowing her eyes.

"No, you don't." Barry answered, trying to smile encouragingly.

Jill got up, pressing the lock pick in her hands very tightly as if it would protect her if he decided to do something to her. She looked at him, then away, glanced back at him and away again. Her eyes seemed to wonder in their sockets like lost sheep, scared. She took a small step towards him, blinking rapidly. Barry frowned; he knew she wasn't okay at all. He couldn't leave her alone like this; the zombies would definitely get to him sooner or later.

He stuck out his hand, waiting for her to grab it. Now that she was finally calm he wasn't going to do anything aggravating or quick, just in case she would lose it again if she got even more scared. She watched his hand for a long time, at times she whispered something to the lock pick she held, but finally decided to grab his hand.

He pulled him after her towards the save room in the Eastern mansion. They met with a few zombies, but they weren't much of a trouble. Barry killed them quickly with his Colt, but Jill always started screaming, demanding for her gun. She knew they were nothing but corpses, but she was too scared to look at them. She knew one of them would eventually be her beloved Chris and she wouldn't be able to kill him.

As they came to the stairway in the Eastern mansion, leading downstairs to the tiny storage room where Barry kept the things he had found but hadn't been able to carry them with him. Jill followed him obediently, looking around with cautious eyes. Somewhere in the back of her head she could hear someone whispering.

_Kill him before he kills you_

She glanced at the impostor's muscular back, grimacing with anger. As soon as she could she would free herself and Barry from his clutches and make it out of the mansion. She stumbled, but managed to stay on her feet. As she glanced back, she could see the distorted face of Chris looking at her, begging for her to escape and come and save him.

When Barry pulled her after him she glared at him with such hatred that it could've killed him.

Popping out of nowhere, Wesker walked into the room, noticing that Barry was still dragging Jill behind him. He chuckled. The poor woman was a sad excuse of a human. She held onto her lock pick like it was some treasure and her eyes rolled around crazily. She was shaking all over, gasping at every small sound. She indeed looked pretty harmless, but he was better off her not hearing what he had to say to Barry, just in case she would escape the mansion and someone, someone as nuts as her, would actually believe her feverish ramblings.

Before she could turn around, he took a hold of her from the behind and put his other hand on her eyes, lifting her gently in the air to carry her into a room where she could scream until he had said what he had wanted to say to Barry.

She kicked and scratched him like a feral cat, hissing and swearing, kicking and growling. Before he managed to open the door and throw her in, she plunged her nails into his skin, pressing hard enough to make it bleed. He grimaced, but let no sound. If he would show her that he was alive she might start asking questions.

He threw her on the floor of the small room, closing the door with a bang and leaning against it to prevent her from coming out. For a while she banged the door, screaming and shouting, crying like a panicking child, but then she quieted, even oddly.

"Barry, have you found the crests?" Wesker asked, his face was solemn; the dark shades wouldn't let any feelings show from his eyes.

Barry didn't obviously hear him; he was looking at the door he leaned against, hoping for a sound from Jill to know that she was all right. Wesker hadn't even checked were there zombies before he had cold-bloodedly thrown Jill there. Maybe to him it was all the same how many of the S.T.A.R.S. died in the mansion, but to Barry it surely wasn't. Ever since Jill had come to the force he had looked after her like she was his daughter. "She's harmless. You didn't have to lock her up!" He said, controlled anger in his voice.

"She might be harmless but do you think she'd take a secret underground laboratory lightly?" Wesker knocked the shades on the tip of his nose, his icy blue eyes fixed on Barry. "You must remember that she's crazy, and no matter how harmless loonies seem like, they can be geniuses."

"We both know Jill." Barry answered, still looking at the door with worried eyes. "You should've even checked the room for zombies before you threw her in!"

Wesker chuckled, lifting the shades again to hide his eyes. "In case she dies… let me comfort you, without her you work faster, you follow my orders faster and your family is safe faster. Which one do you choose, Jill or your family, Barry?" He asked, knowing very well just _how _much Barry's family meant to him. It was not only his life, it was something far more, he was completely dedicated to them and loved them more than anyone could possibly know. Wesker didn't care about that, only that Barry followed his orders and that he would do it fast. He still had to find the wolf emblem to get into the laboratory and with Jill slowing Barry down it would take them _awfully, _maybe even _fatally_ long.

"Wesker, you've got a gun on my throat, let me at least save her life." Barry pleaded. Wesker laughed out loud at that, he had always thought that Barry would bend but not break, but how odd, he was breaking and giving into anything for his poor family.

"If you get her co-operating, then you can keep her with you, but I doubt she will. Barry, she's _crazy_, you'll do her a favour if you shoot her in the back of her neck and let her out of her misery." Wesker said coldly.

"No, she's a team-mate and I won't kill her or leave her behind." Barry insisted.

"Fine. Do what you want, but if you bump into Lisa, one of you will die." Wesker said, the tone of his voice very calm and cool. It was obvious to Barry that he didn't care and he would never care about anyone else's life than his own.

"Lisa? Who or _what_ is she?" Barry asked, looking openly worried.

"Lisa is… You do know that this mansion was designed by George Trevor, don't you?" Wesker asked, but didn't wait for an answer before he continued. "Anyway, Sir Spencer invited him and his family to this mansion when it was completed, the poor guy didn't know about the secret laboratory built under the fountain. Sir Spencer has always had an eye for girls, so he ordered his daughter and wife to be kidnapped and used as scientific test subjects because back then he had trouble of getting them. Lisa appeared to be a success. Her mother died when she was infected with the G-virus, but Lisa survived everything they put into her. She mutated, became stronger and stronger and sadly, lost her mind as well." Wesker gave the locked room's door a pitying look, remembering Jill.

"What happened then?" Barry asked, growing angrier and more disgusted by what had been going on. And no matter what, he was helping Wesker to cover it all up.

"Lisa was strong, but she was mentally very weak. You can't really blame the poor thing because she was only ten", Wesker said and kept a small break to study Barry's facial expressions with amusement. "She wanted to see her mother, but as I already said, she had died long ago. One of the scientists tried to pose as her mother for her to calm her down, but she killed her and ripped off her face and ate it. After that they tried to lock her up again, but she escaped and now resides in the cottage. And she doesn't take kindly to visitors..." Wesker said, a mischievous grin tugging at his lips.

Barry wasn't able of saying anything. He had always thought that Sir Spencer was crazy, but this crazy? He had kidnapped the mansion's designer's daughter and wife while he had been innocently visiting the mansion he had designed and that man, Sir Spencer had experimented on them. Barry didn't even want to think what they had probably done to Trevor himself...

"Anyway, I should be going, the wolf emblem doesn't search itself. You could do me a favour and kill Yawn. She should be waiting for you upstairs." Wesker said, then he disappeared into the corridor with a mischievous smile plastered on his thin lips. Barry sighed and opened the room's door where Jill had been locked.

He looked around for a while, it was a corridor shaped like a U, paintings covered the other wall and small spotlights of different colours were pointed at them. The first one was a small child playing, the second a lady, probably Mrs. Spencer and the last one was an old man, maybe even Sir Spencer himself. How Barry despised to see the last image, it somehow made his stomach turn. The man's eyes were so empty of emotions, it was like he was dead inside, cold as ice. He waited for a moment for Jill to show up, but there wasn't even a sound. Somewhere a gush of cold air came to him, like there was a door leading out.

Immediately he deduced the worst and sprinted to the turn, looking at the other sides of the paintings. In the end of the corridor there really was a door.

And it was open.

---

Jill ran down the stairs of the main hall and into the statue room, digging the sword key from her pocket. She didn't stop before she had closed the door to the statue room and leaned against it, heaving a relieved sigh. The room was deadly quiet as if someone was waiting for her to come. The paintings and photographs looked at her with malevolent gazes, she was sure that some of them were narrowing their eyes to see better what their newest victim looked like. The statue in the middle didn't look at her, but she was glowing ominously as if she was from a distorted dream. Even the air seemed to be stopped, it was like even the dust falling down had stopped with the stillness of the room. She had escaped from her impostor, thanks to someone she didn't know. She assumed that maybe it had been Chris or one of the Bravos that had finally caught the impostor and killed him. She let herself fall on the floor, breathing heavily.

Her hand found Barry on her belt almost instinctively and patted him. Not even once had she questioned him, she knew that this was the real Barry, not the one that had been dragging him around the mansion even if the impostor had showed her a possible way out. He was safe as well and glad that they had escaped.

She decided to keep moving in case her stalker was coming after her. It was going to be much easier to avoid him by moving all the time. She knew that if she stood still in the statue room, waiting for help to arrive she would go crazy.

She opened the door with the sword key she had got from the book, entering into a long, L-shaped corridor with light green walls. On the right wall were lots of windows, making her feel highly uncomfortable. On the left were a lot of drawers, on each of them some gloomy family pictures. She put her hand on her gun realizing that her gun was with the impostor before she started towards the turn of the corridor.

"Nothing here…" She said quietly as she reached the turn. Somehow she still didn't want to believe it. Her instincts were jumping to the walls already but something made her even more alarmed, as if something was coming her way, readying its claws or fangs, yearning for her blood.

From somewhere the sound of a piano being played floated into the dark corridor. A light melody was being played, but it wasn't soothing. The sounds of incongruous keys were like screams of pain, twisted by the malevolent mansion. It made Jill fear; who or what could possibly play a piano in the mansion? She reflexively pressed against the wall, listening to the music. She could almost see the smooth movements of the long fingers dancing on the white keys, sometimes brushing past the black ones.

Jill screamed as the window broke and a green, frog-like creature jumped in with a shriek.

She had no weapon, she was surely going to die.

---

Over and done! How did you like it? Now, I promise, the next chapter will be horror again because now Jill is alone and free to go crazy! Bathtubes are waiting for her...

Thanks for reading, I'd love to hear what you think!


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